Researchers at MIT have used two experimental cancer drugs in tandem to fight melanomas. The team paired protein kinase inhibitors with ribonuclease drugs and set them loose onto tumors, and found that the combination worked better than either drug does alone. The discovery could help reduce side effects of cancer treatments and make them more effective.
Open brain surgery is about as dangerous as it sounds, but for sufferers of conditions like Parkinson’s and epilepsy it can be the only way to relieve their symptoms. Unfortunately, this means drilling a hole in the skull and stimulating the brain with electrical currents, bringing on the risk of serious side effects. Fortunately, scientists have opened a new doorway to the brain, developing the Stentrode, a promising first-of-a-kind device that can deliver the currents to targeted areas through a small keyhole incision in the neck.
Physicists at The University of Toledo are part of an international team of scientists who discovered a single material that produces white light, opening the door for a new frontier in lighting, which accounts for one-fifth of global energy consumption.
“Due to its high efficiency, this new material can potentially replace the current phosphors used in LED lights — eliminating the blue-tinged hue — and save energy,” said Dr. Yanfa Yan, professor of physics at UT. “More research needs to be done before it can be applied to consumer products, but the ability to reduce the power that bulbs consume and improve the color quality of light that the bulbs emit is a positive step to making the future more environmentally friendly.”
The renewable energy research was recently published in Nature, the world’s leading multidisciplinary science journal.
The discovery by researchers at the University of Leeds marks a major breakthrough which has eluded material scientists for more than 30 years.
The ‘auxetic’ stretching property, which is found in human tendons and cat skin, had only been recreated using conventional materials.
Continue reading “Scientists create ‘liquid crystal’ that gets THICKER when stretched” »
Physicists creating the Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog have discovered four new black hole mergers through the detection of gravitational waves.
Over the weekend in Maryland, physicists involved in the Virgo and LIGO project made the exciting announcement that they had discovered four completely new black hole mergers which came about after gravitational waves were detected around these black holes. This includes what is thought to be the largest black hole collision that we currently know about, which occurred a whopping 5 billion years ago. This monstrous collision created a black hole so big that it is 80 times larger than the sun.
As Ars Technica reports, the four new black hole mergers that have been discovered will be included in a very special piece of research known as the Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog, or GWTC-1, whose aim will be to report on gravitational wave events like these and document them thoroughly. Including the four new black hole mergers that were just detected, there will now be 11 gravitational wave events to catalog.
The Pentagon is also looking at living camouflage, self-healing paint, and a variety of other applications of engineered organisms, but the basic science remains a challenge.
How do you detect submarines in an expanse as large as the ocean? The U.S. military hopes that common marine microorganisms might be genetically engineered into living tripwires to signal the passage of enemy subs, underwater vessels, or even divers.
It’s one of many potential military applications for so-called engineered organisms, a field that promises living camouflage that reacts to its surroundings to better avoid detection, new drugs and medicines to help deployed forces survive in harsh conditions, and more. But the research is in its very early stages, military officials said.
Continue reading “The US Military Is Genetically Engineering New Life Forms To Detect Enemy Subs” »
An American born in 2017 is expected to live to be 78.6 years old, according to data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. That’s one-tenth of a year lower than the previous year, or, put another way, it shaves 1.2 months off the life expectancy of a baby born in 2016. Life expectancy dropped from 2014 to 2015, then held steady in 2016, the CDC said.
The decline is a troubling sign for the United States, which already usually ranks lowest among other wealthy countries for life expectancy.
The top three causes of death, unchanged from previous years, were heart disease, cancer and unintentional injuries. The report attributed the drop in life expectancy to increases in mortality from unintentional injuries, which includes most fatal drug overdoses, among other factors.
Continue reading “US life expectancy drops again as opioid deaths and suicide rates rise” »
